CenturyLink Consolidates Ethernet Offering

CenturyLink is gathering its four Ethernet offerings into one consolidated product.

The new solution, which is compliant with the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) 2.0 standard, is available in 35 markets, and is a product CenturyLink says is consistent with what competitors are offering.

“It’s a single product that combines four prior products, so we simplified our portfolio,” said Dean Douglas, president of sales and marketing for CenturyLink. “It makes it easier to provision and we believe that the speed of provisioning and, therefore, the speed of revenue is going to be greater going forward in the Ethernet product.”

During CenturyLink’s earnings call last week, CEO Glen Post said the Ethernet shake-up stems from the goal of standardizing products.{ad}

“The Ethernet standardization … moves us from … Ethernet offerings on multiple platforms to a single offering deploying the latest Ethernet technology across our service footprint. This type of standardization both improves the customer experience and enables, of course, higher margins,” Post said.

SeekingAlpha has a full transcript of the conference call, in which CenturyLink executives acknowledged that their revenues underperformed in 2016. Post attributed the slowing of growth to slower-than-expected growth in MPLS and Ethernet services.

“We also saw lower growth in consumer broadband revenue, driven by unit declines as we shifted our marketing spend more towards bundled higher-speed solutions and tightened our credit policy,” Post said.

John DeLozier, vice president of CenturyLink’s Channel Alliance, said the company is still figuring out the specific partner strategy for the consolidation, as the official launch will not occur until June at the earliest.

“We are always looking for ways to simplify our portfolio, making it easier and faster for our partners and customers to do business with CenturyLink, and our new consolidated CenturyLink Ethernet offering aligns with this strategy,” he told Channel Partners.